


a glide path to gold

by radialarch



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Skating, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:08:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26690419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radialarch/pseuds/radialarch
Summary: Dimitri was at the rink when he saw the news. That wasn’t saying much; Dimitri was always at the rink. He blinked sweat out of his eyes, gulped down a mouthful of water, and caught his phone before it rattled off the barrier. A push notification, clean and neat:Felix Fraldarius to Return to Ice in Derdriu Open.//Dimitri reckons with legacy, old friendships, and figure skating’s biggest competition: the Gronder Games.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 15
Kudos: 73
Collections: Dimilix Big Bang





	a glide path to gold

**Author's Note:**

> competitive figure skating rules here are loosely based on the real world, with details fudged as necessary for narrative purposes. look, fódlan's got dragons, they can hold the ~~olympics~~ gronder games every five years.
> 
> content notes: sports injury and recovery, major depression incl. some passive suicidal ideation, casual/sports-typical ableism, references to restricted eating, mentioned infectious illness

###### i. past

When Felix was fifteen, he made youth development camp for the second time. He came to Itha a day early with Rodrigue, who was one of the coaches, but when he lugged all his equipment to his assigned room, there was already someone sitting on the other bed.

“Oh, hey,” Felix said. “Thought you wouldn’t be in til tomorrow.”

He hadn’t seen Dimitri in a little while. Junior nationals, a couple months back, when Dimitri had won gold and grinned atop the podium. Now he looked tired. “Rufus dropped me off this morning,” he said, blinking. “Rodrigue said it’d be fine since he’d be here.”

His father hadn’t told Felix anything. “Wanna go down to the rink?” he said, putting his luggage down. It looked like Dimitri had unpacked already, but they were only here for a week. Felix had lived out of his suitcase for longer than that.

Dimitri brightened. “Can we?”

A few skating blogs had started calling Dimitri “the Ice Prince”, which seemed like it might stick, because puns went far in sports journalism and Dimitri couldn’t relax around reporters. It seemed stupid to Felix—all they had to do was not ask about Lambert—but they always did. 

Still: when Dimitri smiled, it changed his whole face. People just photographed it less often.

“Probably. Nobody else is here, who’s gonna kick us out?” Felix shrugged and headed back out the door. Dimitri was out right behind him.

They’d been assigned a room on the fourth floor. Their voices echoed a little when Felix went through the propped-open door to the stairwell. “Were you just gonna sit there until I got here?” he said, clattering down. “You could’ve texted or something.”

“Thought you might be busy,” said Dimitri. “I didn’t wanna bother you.”

Felix paused halfway down the second floor to shoot Dimitri an incredulous look. “What, from sleeping in the car? You know it’s boring.”

The first time they went to Itha, Rodrigue had been busy with Glenn, so it was Lambert who drove them both up, something jazzy crackling out of the speakers. Felix and Dimitri had clung to the windows for the first hour, counting pegasi on the wing, and when that lost its charm Felix slouched down as far as he could go in his seat and dozed. He woke up at Itha with Dimitri’s jacket shoved between his head and the window, the Fhirdiad invitational logo imprinted on one cheek. 

Dimitri shrugged. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, “you’re here now,” and then they were out in the sun, sprinting across concrete for the big double doors of the rink. Dimitri got there a moment before Felix did, hanging onto the door handle and laughing too hard to catch his breath. “Win.”

“Not fair,” Felix panted at him, hands braced against his knees. “You’re taller.”

Dimitri sobered up at that. “I am,” he said, worrying at his lip. “Can you tell?”

Felix knew what he meant. When he gestured, Dimitri straightened reluctantly, while Felix tried to remember how much he used to have to tilt his neck to look into Dimitri’s face, pink from the run. “It’s hard to tell,” he said, a little hushed. “Maybe.”

Dimitri kicked at the steps. “I am,” he said again. “It’s bad timing.”

They all measured time by the Gronder Games. “You can do it,” Felix said loyally. Dimitri was already nervous about his debut, something Felix couldn’t do for another year. Now he would be worrying about this. “Who cares if you’re growing? You’ll get used to it, you train more than anybody. Anyway, there’s always the next one. I’ll be there.” Felix couldn’t imagine anything else. Him and Dimitri, fighting for gold. It was what they’d always done.

Dimitri gave him a small, slanted smile. “Will you?” he said. “Confident for a guy who keeps two-footing the landing on his triple flip.”

“I do not!” Felix said, outraged. “Just watch me, all right?”

By now Felix had spent more than half his life in and out of rinks across Fódlan: frost in the air, the familiar anticipation. They tumbled through the doors together, shoes squeaking on the tiles. They were here to skate. It was the easiest thing in the world.

“Ow,” said Felix, prodding at his hip. He didn’t have to peel down his leggings to know there would be a bruise beginning underneath. Three falls in a row, and he still couldn’t get the timing right. 

“Well, don’t touch it,” said Dimitri, sounding uncannily like Glenn. Gilbert had started Dimitri on quads, which meant _he’d_ had the harness. “Ice?”

“Yes, please,” Felix said. He gave another poke to where it ached before he dropped to the floor and kicked his shoes off. It wasn’t just the hip. The bargain they all made was: not now. One more jump, one more try at perfection. They breathed through the pain of their bodies until they couldn’t, until physics won out over force of will, and then got up and did it all over again the day after.

The cold pack was nice, ice and healing magic spun together. Felix pressed it to his side and thumbed the sigil, sighing as it activated. “Did you hear about Sylvain?” he asked, to distract himself from the dull pain. “They gave him _curfew_.” 

Dimitri had flopped down onto his bed, face in his pillow, but he turned over so he could peer at Felix. “Shouldn’t have tried to sneak down to the girls’ floor in the middle of the night,” he said. “He’ll get over it.”

Felix wasn’t quite as sanguine. “He just needs to stop being such an idiot. Why does he keep making his partners mad? At this rate, he’s gonna have to switch back to singles because no one on the continent’ll skate pairs with him.”

Dimitri shrugged: a little awkward, since he was leaning on his forearms. “He likes it, I guess,” he said, doubt all over his words. “The girls, or the—whatever.”

Felix snorted. “You can say _making out_.” The ache was fading beneath the pack into a more bearable numbness. He closed his eyes, leaning back until his head hit Dimitri’s mattress. Like this, he could hear the strained sounds of Dimitri breathing beside his ear. “It’s dumb. He’s just distracting himself.”

Dimitri didn’t say anything while Felix stretched one foot out to roll his ankle, blindly; and then he was shifting, close enough to Felix that he felt the movement. Felix tipped his head back even further, opened his eyes. “Hey.”

Dimitri’s eyelashes were nice. That was Felix’s last meaningless thought before Dimitri leaned down and kissed him. It was messy: the angle wasn’t quite right. Dimitri’s breaths were warm across Felix’s cheek, and his lips were soft. Felix had never considered Dimitri’s lips before.

Felix made some kind of noise—he wasn’t sure what, but it made Dimitri pull away. His skin was prickling all over, strangely warm. “What was that?” he turned to ask, and it came out in a croak.

“Sorry,” said Dimitri, just as raspy. He was pushing himself up, his face a bright pink. “I was just— I shouldn’t have done that.”

Felix was more aware of his mouth than he’d ever been. “Don’t _apologize_ ,” he hissed, touching his bottom lip with the tip of his tongue. Dimitri’s eyes flicked down at the motion and came back up more slowly, faintly guilty.

Felix had always thought it was boring, the way Sylvain went on about kissing girls. He hadn’t known Dimitri was an option. The idea that Dimitri had thought about this—that he’d thought _Felix_ might be an option, and liked it—sent something hot down Felix’s spine. It made him want to do it again.

“I wasn’t prepared,” Felix said, clearing his throat. “So you should— you can try again.” Then he was struck with a wild anxiety. “If you want to?” It came out more of a question than he wanted. Thirty seconds, and already he was ready to shove his head into a pillow. Was this what it was like being Sylvain? No wonder he never got anything done.

“Yes,” Dimitri said, very fast. “Um. If you— yeah.” He leaned back down, gratifyingly eager, and this time Felix had time to get his hands up, onto Dimitri’s face. Their noses banged together, and Dimitri’s laugh came out in a puff of air against Felix’s mouth; then Felix tilted his head so their mouths were more aligned. He had no idea what to do with his, but Dimitri’s was open, hot, and that was Dimitri’s _tongue_ licking across Felix’s lips.

Felix found himself pressing into that touch, leaning up on his knees. If he opened his mouth— that was wetter, and Dimitri’s tongue was pressing against Felix’s teeth, which sent an inexplicable thrill down Felix’s spine. He tried to speak, or maybe do the same thing to Dimitri, he couldn’t tell which— 

Dimitri jerked back, a hand to his mouth. Felix had bitten him.

“Oh _saints_.” Felix pressed his heated face into the side of the mattress, breathing hard. It occurred to him that he was _bad_ at kissing, a fact far more mortifying than it would have been ten minutes ago. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

Dimitri was laughing. “Hey,” he said, and stroked the side of Felix’s face until he looked up. “No, it was, it was good. Come up here.” 

The cold pack was lying somewhere under the bedframe. Felix abandoned it and clambered up onto Dimitri’s bed, into his lap, hissing as the movement pulled at his sore hip. Only afterwards did he realize that was a mistake, because Dimitri’s face went all worried at once.

“Should’ve remembered,” he said, hand hovering an inch over Felix’s hipbone like he had an ounce of magic in him. “Can I see?”

Felix plucked at the hem of his t-shirt, easy; then he glanced at Dimitri, whose mouth was red, and who was watching Felix’s fingers curl over the worn fabric with a faintly dazed look. Oh, he thought, fingers stuttering. Then he dragged the shirt up and peeled down the waistband of his leggings with his other hand, slow, framing a patch of mottled skin with his fingers, and Dimitri stared like he was starving and Felix was a feast.

“If you wanna touch,” said Felix, breath caught absurdly in his chest.

Dimitri’s fingers drifted closer. “I’ll hurt you.” 

“I won’t mind,” said Felix, which was true, and then: “I like it.” Sometimes late at night, after a brutal practice, pressing at his bruises felt electric. He’d never told anyone that.

Dimitri looked like Felix had just punched him. “ _Felix_ ,” he said on an exhale. “You—” Then he reached out, the pads of his fingers laid lightly across the bruise, and whatever else he meant to say got lost when Felix grabbed at Dimitri’s wrist and pushed down.

There was pain—there was always pain—there was Dimitri’s intake of breath as his fingers curled around Felix’s hipbone. Felix ducked his head to kiss Dimitri again, brushing some of Dimitri’s hair out of his mouth. His whole body was ringing, his hearing curiously muted, the way it got when he stepped onto the ice. The only clear thing was Dimitri, his harsh breaths and his steady thighs, his hand warm and broad on Felix’s bare skin.

“So, hey,” said Dimitri, hoarse like he’d been shouting. “Is this a distraction?” He pulled back, and Felix couldn’t stop looking at his mouth, still parted open. He gave in to the urge to put his thumb to the curve of Dimitri’s lower lip, and Dimitri’s tongue flickered across it, brief and burning. 

“I don’t know,” Felix said, equally low. “We’re just— trying something, aren’t we?”

“For how long?” Dimitri’s face was so open. It made Felix want to hide and be honest at the same time.

“I don’t know,” Felix said again. “Long as you’ve got.”

Dimitri smiled. Again, that shocking transformation. “For you?” he said. “All the time in the world.”

By the end of the week, they were both battered—healing magic only went so far—but that wasn’t new. There was a stubborn ache in Felix’s right knee that wouldn’t go away; Dimitri’s ankle had given out on him on a bad landing, and now when Felix wrapped his fingers around the joint he could feel heat underneath, a warning sign. None of it stopped them from continuing to make out on Dimitri’s bed, or pressed against the door of their room, or, for a brief moment, crammed in the second-floor stairwell with the railing digging into Felix’s back, until a door slammed down the hallway and they frantically broke apart. For the space of a week, Felix had two things at once: the unforgiving ice he’d known all his life, and Dimitri, new, burning up beneath his touch. The two were superimposed in memory. The crouch of his sit-spin; Dimitri’s fingertips curling under Felix’s thighs. He didn’t want it to end.

And then: Glenn.

Instead of going back home, he and Rodrigue went straight to Fhirdiad. In the big hospital there, for the third time in four years, Felix watched Glenn grit his teeth and lie to the healers, and Rodrigue, and himself.

“Mr. Fraldarius, your stress fractures cannot heal if you won’t let them,” said the healer, exasperated. The pool of light beneath her hands was a dull red as she slid them along the arch of Glenn’s foot. “You know this; it’s not your first time. How long have you been experiencing pain here?”

Glenn didn’t answer. Of course he didn’t. How long had Glenn been experiencing pain? How long had Glenn been on the ice? The two were synonymous. 

“Can I just get what I need,” Glenn said. The healer wasn’t paying attention; the light had turned harsher, with an audible crackle in the air, and the skin at the corner of Glenn’s mouth went tight. A familiar expression. Felix saw it often on his own face. “If you need me to stay off the foot—I can do it for a week, maybe two, I’ll take all the concoctions you give me, but the season—”

“Six weeks, minimum,” said the healer. “And you’ll have to sit the season out.”

Glenn flinched so hard the railing on the bed rattled. “No.”

“Mr. Fraldarius—” 

“The Gronder Games—”

“If you skate this season,” the healer said, “you might not be able to _walk_ for the next one.” 

Glenn’s jaw twitched, and Felix knew what he was going to say. “Glenn,” he said first. “Don’t.”

It was like Glenn noticed him for the first time. “What are you doing here?” he said. “Dad, you shouldn’t have— look, you don’t understand. You’re just a kid.”

“I’m _not_ ,” Felix said immediately, fists clenched. To his dismay, he could feel hot tears prickling in his eyes. He’d always been bad at getting angry. “Stop being stupid, you’re gonna get hurt.”

“You don’t know what it’s like,” said Glenn. “I’m so close— Dad, _you_ know, come on.” 

They both looked to Rodrigue. Felix’s heart dropped; Rodrigue was distractedly rubbing at his wedding band. Two years before Glenn was born, Rodrigue had won silver at Gronder skating pairs with their mother. Out of the three of them, it was only Felix who didn’t remember her.

“Mr. Fraldarius, this is not a question of will.” The healer had straightened. Her face was as severe as her words. “You’ve simply pushed your body too far. Some of the bones are past healing; we will need to remove necrotic tissue before it enters the blood. Please understand: we are healers. The concerns we have are about your life.”

“Like it _matters_ without—” Glenn burst out, then bit savagely at his lip until it went white beneath his teeth. “ _Fuck_.”

“Felix,” said his father. “Could you please—” He looked so old. He’d stopped competing when Felix’s mother died, nearly the whole of Felix’s life. “Perhaps you shouldn’t be here right now.”

“Fine,” Felix bit out, scrambling to his feet. He didn’t want to be here, either. They all spoke the same language on the ice, but here in this cramped hospital room, it was like they were from a different world, his father and Glenn. He couldn’t think of anything to say to make them understand, so he just grabbed his jacket from his chair and left. He managed not to wipe his face until the door swung shut behind him, but that still felt like losing.

He texted Dimitri just outside the hospital, shoved the phone back in his pocket and set off on a near-run. Dimitri didn’t rest on his rest days, and Felix knew the way. The harder he ran, the less he had to think.

Dimitri was sprawled on the steps outside his usual dance studio, patting sweat off his neck with a towel. “Felix,” he said when he spotted him, pushing himself up, face creased in a frown. “Is everything okay? I tried to call you.”

Felix checked; he had three missed calls. “It’s the foot again,” he said flatly, and sat. His heart, frantic in his chest, wasn’t enough to drown out his own words. “They told him to sit out the season.”

Dimitri knew about Glenn’s history— _everyone_ knew about it, after the fall two years ago. There was article after article about Glenn’s comeback, how he’d qualified for the Fódlan Cup by a hundredth of a point and then gone on to smash the FC record. None of them mentioned the vulneraries Glenn had swallowed down religiously every half hour, the entire week before the Cup, and how for a full moon after Glenn couldn’t put weight on his left foot without going bone-white. 

“Oh, no,” Dimitri said. “Felix, I’m so sorry.” 

Felix pressed his head between his knees and breathed, in through his nose and out of his mouth. It didn’t help. His chest tightened when he tried to speak, and the ground between his shoes was blurry. “Glenn doesn’t want to,” he said. “Because of the Games.” It would be worse than before, Felix could see it. The ice was not cruel, but neither did it have mercy. The Gronder Games would break him; there wouldn’t be anything left.

But wasn’t this the bargain they all made? Ingrid’s father had had a skate slice cleanly through his hamstrings, and now he came to watch her with his back stiff and the cane clenched in his hand. Miklan Gautier had never even made it to junior nationals because he quit after his concussion, and Felix had thought: so what? Skating hurt. It was what you did with it that mattered.

Now Felix was staring the _what_ squarely in the face. “Would you?” he said. 

Beside him, Dimitri shifted. “What?”

“The saints-damned _games_ ,” Felix spat at the ground, savage. “What’s the _point_?” Rodrigue kept his medal locked up in his study, next to his mother’s, and all he did now was coach. Felix only ever looked up their routines on his phone with his earbuds in, slammed the screen down at the slightest movement in the corner of his eye, but he knew that the routine wouldn’t score high these days. They were all chasing something ephemeral. No matter what, in the end, skating left you behind. 

“I—” Dimitri said, confused, and then, “My father.”

Lambert the Lion, King of the Ice. He swept the Fódlan Cup four years in a row, never finished off the podium in his career, but the timing had been wrong; he’d died in the car crash two weeks before the opening ceremony at Gronder. Dimitri never talked about it. Felix choked on a sound.

“Felix,” said Dimitri, and slid his hand over Felix’s, on his knee. “Look, you’re upset.”

“Yeah, I’m _upset_.” Felix snarled out the word. “Glenn wants to throw himself in the grinder for this, and my dad might fucking let him. And you’re— look at you! You’re here so Gilbert can pretend he doesn’t know you’re doing plyos on your day off, because who cares as long as you medal.”

Dimitri jerked back as if stung. “You do it too,” he said. The meal charts, the training schedule Felix had memorized, the ache in his hamstring, his quads, curled around his heart. “Isn’t this what we are?”

Felix got to his feet. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting from Dimitri. “Then maybe I don’t want it,” he said. The words scraped past his throat, cut like glass. “I don’t— there has to be something else.”

“What?” said Dimitri, like he couldn’t imagine it. Neither could Felix, except at the very edges. This wasn’t living. They were all dying, slow, with medals yoked around their necks. “No, hey, stay, come on. It’s gonna be okay.”

“Sorry I bothered you,” said Felix into the distance between them. His hands were fists in his pockets when he turned to leave. “Go back to your training. That’s what you are.”

“Felix,” said Dimitri behind him, pleading, but Felix didn’t look back. He couldn’t.

###### ii. present

Dimitri was at the rink when he saw the news. That wasn’t saying much; Dimitri was always at the rink. He blinked sweat out of his eyes, gulped down a mouthful of water, and caught his phone before it rattled off the barrier. A push notification, clean and neat: _Felix Fraldarius to Return to Ice in Derdriu Open_. 

His bad leg wobbled beneath him. Dimitri caught himself with a forearm on the barrier and stared at the words. His thoughts had all gone still, smooth like polished ice. 

He and Felix had been nearly inseparable as children. But Glenn’s injury had made Felix angry in ways Dimitri could not quite grasp, so that he nearly didn’t debut at all. Dimitri didn’t know what Rodrigue said to Felix to change his mind, but Felix had carried it with him like a wound. It made him cutting and distant, to reporters and his friends and his father, and to Dimitri most of all.

The last time Dimitri had seen Felix’s face, it had been in a clip of the press conference. Nearly two years ago, now, which would have been once unimaginable. “Have you spoken to your father about this decision?” someone had asked over the camera flashes, and even before the question had finished Felix had snapped, “Rodrigue is no longer my coach, and his thoughts are therefore irrelevant.” The video looped three times before Dimitri shut it, every time stuttering at the brief frozen glimpse of Felix turning, mouth thin, to walk away. From the reporters, his father, the thing that was consuming Dimitri. From skating, which had been both their worlds.

Now he was coming back. And if the federation was sending him to Derdriu, they had plans for him.

Dimitri put his phone down, too hard, and scrubbed at his face. What did this matter? The healers had cleared him to skate this season. For once, the timing worked out: he could make up for his performance the last time he’d gone to Gronder. All this meant was that there was one more person for Dimitri to beat on the way to the podium, and he _knew_ Felix, his weakness in PCS, his unreliable flip, the way he went tight with nerves before every routine. 

Felix might have changed; he must have, because he couldn’t imagine the Felix he’d known coming back to a thing he’d walked away from. But none of it would make a difference. It’d felt like swallowing ground glass, his year of recovery, and he couldn’t lose when it mattered most.

“Dimitri!” Gilbert called across the ice. “Again, and clean up that footwork!”

Dimitri shook his head to clear it, took a breath with his eyes closed. No point in skating with an unsettled heart. He focused, instead, on the body: his shoulders, the curve of his spine, the slight twinge in his knee that he acknowledged, then set aside. It was just skating. He’d been doing this since he was six years old.

He pushed himself away from the barrier; settled into place and waited, perfectly still, for Gilbert’s signal. The nod; the fall of his hand.

It was just skating. And on the ice, Dimitri could fly.

Felix took silver at the Derdriu Open, to Claude von Riegan’s gold. A well-deserved coup for Claude, who was new to the Fódlan circuit, and who only smiled thinly the more he got underscored on his GOE. Dimitri didn’t watch the competition live, but he couldn’t wholly avoid the coverage. He scanned an article, pausing at the photo of Felix. Felix didn’t look upset, though his eyes were narrowed in thought, half-turned to say something to his new coach. Seteth Cichol was notorious for his exacting standards. Dimitri wondered how Felix had convinced him to take him on; then he wondered what Rodrigue thought of it.

But Dimitri didn’t have much time to wonder, not with the season in full swing. The Rhodos Trophy was upon him, and then the invitational at Hyrm. With the season he’d taken off, he didn’t have enough points to qualify for nationals yet, but Gilbert was still wary about the knee. Mostly, what this meant was that Dimitri did his conditioning exercises religiously and stocked up on vulneraries.

Felix had to be doing the same; now that he’d returned, Dimitri couldn’t turn without seeing news of him. Another silver at Nuvelle, and then gold at Daphnel. He was doing well—the commentariat were already speculating about his chances at Gronder.

Still, Dimitri didn’t get to see him on the ice until Fhirdiad.

When he went down to the rink for late morning practice, it was early enough that the first group was just finishing up. He spotted Felix immediately, his arms curving over his head as he went into a spin. He was in practice clothes: that tight black turtleneck he used to favor, worn soft over the years. When he finally came to a stop, shoulders thrown back, panting a little, all Dimitri could focus on for a moment was the stretch of the fabric over Felix’s chest.

Then Felix straightened with a shake of his head, skating off the ice in long, smooth strides. One of the last stragglers, before the resurfacers came on. Dimitri loosened his grip on his water bottle and took a gulp. Felix had always been singularly focused on the ice, but here, like this, he looked comfortable, sure. Like he was the one who’d never left.

Dimitri went down to the boards to lace on his skates. Felix, talking to his coach, glanced sideways, and stiffened. 

“Hi,” said Dimitri. The smile was sitting wrong on his face, but he couldn’t figure out how to fix it.

“Dimitri,” Felix said. Just that, hanging awkwardly between them, while the laces cut into Dimitri’s fingers. Then he said, the words strange in his mouth, “Good luck.” 

He’d never said that to Dimitri before. “You know what you can do,” he’d always said. “You don’t need luck.”

Felix was waiting for something, but Dimitri had no idea what. “Thank you,” he tried, and knew immediately it was wrong. _Thank you_ , like they were strangers, when once upon a time Dimitri had known everything about him.

Felix’s eyes flicked uncomfortably away, to where his coach was waiting, before he forced them back. “I’ll see you,” he said gruffly, and then he was gone. Dimitri dropped his head between his knees and breathed, in and out. He’d trained for this. The top two at nationals went to the Gronder Games; he couldn’t fuck this up a second time. 

Some days, it felt like his entire life was preparation: all the podiums he’d climbed, all the medals hung round his neck, for the one thing Lambert never had the chance to win. 

He could. He wasn’t seventeen anymore, cursing as his center of gravity changed, and thrust into the spotlight after Glenn’s sudden retirement. He’d grown into his frame now; he knew all its flaws, from the knee to the dark choking thing inside his head. 

Felix was probably going to make it. Dimitri could see it in the way he carried himself. But Dimitri had clawed his way this far, after the fall, the surgery, every loss that threw a shadow onto his father’s perfect legacy. He hadn’t had a _choice_.

The ice was opening for late warmup. There was Ashe coming down, the rink beginning to fill with sound, and the weight of Gilbert’s quiet expectation. Dimitri exhaled, got up, and went to work.

If Dimitri could have had his way, he would have skipped the banquet. 

He felt stretched thin, exhausted, and there was a headache forming behind his eyes. He’d felt like this during the competition, too. He skated through it and ended up with silver, but he’d won nationals before, so it didn’t matter. He picked up a drink to have something to do with his hands. Mostly he was sipping gingerly at it, letting the sparkling wine trickle over his tongue. 

“Dimitri!” said an exuberant voice, and then someone enveloped him in a crushing hug. “How long has it been? No, don’t answer that. Saints, it’s great to see you.”

“Sylvain,” Dimitri said, taking a half-step back, and automatically glanced around for Ingrid. Sylvain was immensely present, flushed and loose in a way that meant he was only drunk enough to be extremely cheerful.

“Hunting for canapés,” Sylvain said. “There’s a sausage thing she really likes.” He was grinning as he said it, his eyes crinkled at the corners. Belatedly, Dimitri remembered that he and Ingrid had won pairs.

“Ah, congratulations,” he fumbled out. “I suppose I’ll see you two at Gronder.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Sylvain, casual like it wouldn’t be his first time. “It’s gonna be great. And Felix, too! You remember when we used to all skate together?” 

Dimitri didn’t know what his face did, but Sylvain was apologizing the next moment. “Oh, shit, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” said Dimitri. They were good memories. It had been how Dimitri learned how to fall, how to swallow his tears and get back up, because Felix always cried when Dimitri did and he hated to see Felix cry. He remembered Ingrid clutching Glenn’s hand the first time she wobbled onto the ice, and Sylvain skating in lazy, aimless circles, like this wasn’t going to become his life; Miklan hadn’t quit yet.

Rodrigue had taken them to the rink often; never the Gautiers, and only once Ingrid’s father. But usually—every weekend, unless he had a competition—it had been Lambert. 

“Ingrid!” Sylvain called over Dimitri’s shoulder, both desperate and relieved. “ _Great_ timing. Come talk to Dimitri, he’s missed you.”

“Ah, sorry,” Dimitri said, already stepping away. “I should, I need— excuse me,” to Ingrid, as he turned and banged into her shoulder in his bid to escape. 

“What did you do?” Ingrid was saying behind him, and— Sylvain was going to apologize again, and Ingrid would look sorry, and Dimitri couldn’t listen to any of it, he couldn’t _breathe_.

The evening air hit him immediately when he stepped out from the banquet hall, cold on his face. He still had the wine glass in his hand; he looked at it, then gingerly put it on the lip of one of the concrete planters outside. Then he sat next to it himself and loosened his tie so he could breathe. 

Winter in Fhirdiad could bite. His breaths came out in white puffs into the night air, and he’d left his jacket behind. He was going to have to go back inside in a minute, but he preferred it out here. He knew the cold. He’d known, once, how to make small talk and smile like everyone wanted, but somewhere along the way he’d forgotten it.

The banquet hall doors opened behind him, throwing a solid square of light onto the pavement. Footsteps, and then a sigh. The shadow took Dimitri’s glass and held it up between thin fingers.

Felix said, “You look like shit.”

Dimitri closed his eyes. He’d had headaches before his fall. For months after the surgery, Gilbert frowned whenever he saw Dimitri, talking to the healers in low tones Dimitri couldn’t make out. “I can still skate,” he said. He’d done it tonight, hadn’t he? It didn’t matter what happened off the ice. The rink, the perfect calm before the music, points lighting up on the board: Dimitri lived in those brief moments. The rest of it wasn’t real.

“That wasn’t what I meant,” Felix snapped. “You’re so— damn it, will you _look_ at me?”

Felix’s fingers were on his shirt collar, a sudden bloom of warmth. Dimitri’s eyes flew open. This was the closest they’d been in years. Felix’s hair was shorter than he usually kept it, and fine flyaway strands were stuck to his temple. He’d undone the top two buttons of his shirt, though he’d kept the suit jacket. It hugged the trim line of his waist like it’d been made for him.

It probably had. He wasn’t fifteen anymore, awkward and fidgeting in one of Glenn’s old suits. “You look good,” Dimitri said, startled by the realization. In the juniors, growing up meant the twisting of bones, silvered marks along the spine, perhaps the end of a career before it even began. But Felix looked like he’d done more than survive the betrayal of his body. He fit it better like this.

Felix’s cheeks were pink-tinged from the cold. “Shut up,” he said, sliding his gaze across Dimitri’s face. “Your short program.”

Dimitri tried to remember back two days ago. He’d fumbled a landing on a combination; the rest was a blur of muscle memory. “Yes?”

Felix abruptly let him go and straightened, shoving the glass into Dimitri’s chest until he took it. “I’ve seen you skate it better.”

“You— you watched me?” Dimitri tried not to watch Felix skate; it made something hot spike up in his chest. Here, it’d been unavoidable. Watching Felix slide into a parallel glide, he’d bitten the inside of his cheek until it bled.

“Of course I watch. You’re competition.”

Felix’s voice was dismissive, and that somehow helped Dimitri draw in a breath. He couldn’t fault the assessment. He’d skated the routine better at Hyrm, though he remembered nearly nothing of that, either, just numbers lighting up. 

The glass was cool in his hand, and trembling. He tried to put it down before it spilled, and Felix caught him by an elbow, warmth bleeding through the thin fabric. “Dimitri,” he said, tight as a wire. “What are you _doing_ here?” His other arm inscribed a wide arc in the air, but what it encompassed, Dimitri couldn’t fathom.

“Skating,” he said blankly. “What else?” That was all he ever did. In a month he’d do it all over again, under the lion-and-eagle flag of the Gronder Games, the lights and the ice and skaters from every corner of Fódlan. He’d lace on his skates the same way he’d done for nearly two decades, and he’d— 

He’d win. He couldn’t envision another option. He’d win and that would mean all of this had been worth it, the skin scraped raw across the jut of his ankle and the bruises the vulneraries never soothed away completely, the knee and the surgery, the year he spent holding every sound between his teeth. He’d win and maybe that would be enough for the journalists, for everyone who looked at him and saw his father, fill in the missing piece that was all Dimitri could see some mornings when he stared into the mirror.

“That’s not—” Felix’s grip on his elbow went tight, enough to hurt. His voice was viciously controlled when he said, “Go back inside.” He took the wine from him when Dimitri stood, turned him toward the building; it was only when Dimitri reached the threshold that he realized how much the merciless cold had sunk into him.

Felix hadn’t followed. He was a slim dark silhouette in the night, a splash of white at his throat and his wrists. The wine glass glittered oddly in his hand; and then, with a swift jerk of his wrist, he tipped his head back and drank. 

Dimitri stepped inside and let the door swing closed. The sudden warmth that enveloped him stung in little pinpricks, but Dimitri didn’t care; the rest of him was burning up.

The stadium at Gronder looked exactly as it did in pictures.

The lights nearly drowned out the crowd packed into the stands, but the roar was unmistakable, inescapable: a solid wall of sound, slamming into Dimitri as he walked in with the flag. There, at the center of the stage, the lion rampant, the eagle in flight. The golden draperies, a concession to Leicester, fluttering madly. No, Gronder hadn’t changed. Only the people had.

Five years ago, it hadn’t been Dimitri, freshly-debuted and raw with nerves, who bore the flag. It might have been Glenn, except for the final, irrevocable way his body had given out, shockingly ungraceful for all that Glenn had been beautiful on ice. In the end it’d been Catherine Charon hoisting the flag over her hockey-broad shoulders. “First time?” she’d asked Dimitri, quite kindly. “Don’t let it get to you.” 

Well, it wasn’t his first time anymore. Catherine was still playing, but the scowling woman with Catherine’s arm draped over her shoulders was new. Somewhere behind him would be Ingrid, bright-eyed with pride, Sylvain slouching in his Faerghus blue jacket. To Dimitri’s right stood Dedue, tall and proud in Duscur colors. And past Dedue’s partner Flayn, a flash of pale hair: Edelgard von Hresvelg, the flag of Adrestia held high in her hands. 

At age ten Dimitri had tried pairs with Edelgard—might have kept with it, except that Lambert had died and Edelgard had returned to her native Adrestia. Strange how it all seemed to come back to that. Lambert had never made it to Gronder, and in turn his ghost was everywhere Dimitri looked.

The music changed as the Leicester Alliance filtered in. When Dimitri stared up, he could make out the gold threads glittering at the lion’s haunches. 

When Dimitri was young, he thought they called his father Lambert the Lion for his power. Even now, years down the line, he could recall the sensation of his father swinging him up onto his broad shoulders, the easy laughter like his weight was nothing. It was only when strangers began writing elegies for his father in newspapers that Dimitri realized: for all that Dimitri had loved him, some part of Lambert had belonged to Faerghus. That was the burden Lambert shouldered for daring to be great. It was Dimitri’s inheritance.

And now Dimitri was here, trying to fulfill a promise he’d never made.

The shape of Dimitri’s life was nothing like what he’d pictured at five, tottering onto the ice for the first time with his hand dwarfed in his father’s; at ten, before the crash that changed his life, at sixteen wearing the weight of Felix’s conviction like a mantle. Glenn didn’t watch competitions anymore, hadn’t set foot in a rink since his retirement, and Felix, who’d changed coaches and sharpened his smile to get to Gronder, wasn’t even here. Too loud and too much, he’d said; and they’d be skating in the morning.

Still, the ice was the same, and so was what it demanded. That was what Dimitri had been learning all his life.

Dimitri’s season off meant he ended up in the middle of the short program lineup. First up was Adrestia’s Caspar von Bergliez, generally strong but lacking in finesse, and after him Ignatz Victor, who was the other way around. Dimitri tried to watch, but he couldn’t focus. Everything was a blur except his skates when he looked down. 

“Dimitri,” said Gilbert at his shoulder. “You should get ready.” His voice was nearly kind. He’d said the exact same thing the last time at Gronder, and it’d taken Dimitri five years to do it.

Felix went before him, a consequence of a bad loss at Arionrhod. His short program costume had always struck Dimitri as wrong for him: gauzy, delicate, when Felix was forever defined in Dimitri’s memory by uncompromising steel. But he made it work, somehow. Poised at the center of the ice, chin tipped up and perfectly still, he looked like a piece of cut glass.

Then he moved, and he was a storm. 

Felix had grown stronger in the years he was gone, but that wasn’t a surprise. The flex of his thighs as he went into his first quad: a flip, though he’d been weak at that. There was no more hesitation in him, only an explosion of force out and up. The landing was clean, smooth. Dimitri found himself holding his breath as the music built, as Felix flew into a spin. The long, lean lines of him blurred; slowed again in increments, arm flung out to catch hold of his foot. Dimitri’s heartbeat thumped to the steady roll of the drums. It hurt to watch, but it would hurt more to stop.

Felix had been a capable skater in the juniors. Had to be, with his family. Glenn had already started winning medals by the time Felix stepped onto the ice, and Felix always said: Dimitri first, then Glenn. That must have been what drove him to the podium through the novices, frowning at silver in his hand. But Dimitri put on muscle first, hit the harder jumps a touch quicker, and Felix came close—so close, some days—but not close enough, never enough to win. 

Glenn didn’t skate anymore. The records he set no longer stood, and in between the Fódlan Union had changed scoring systems, anyway. Felix would never know if he measured up to Glenn’s shadow. But maybe that wasn’t what he was chasing, here at Gronder Stadium. That combination jump he’d shifted to the back half, a smooth uncoiling of his body, and the landing light as a whisper. That wasn’t Felix looking to the past. Whatever he wanted, it curled, hungry, in the planes of Felix’s face, setting him alight as he went into his final spin. Arms outstretched, the cool glitter of ice all around him. It might have gone on forever.

Without meaning to, Dimitri glanced toward Seteth, this man who’d drawn out of Felix the performance of a lifetime. He was nodding slowly, a small satisfied smile on his face. Felix met it and nodded back. That was all.

The children came on to clear the ice for Dimitri. He couldn’t follow this, follow _Felix_. Gilbert was squeezing his hand, peering into his face with concern. “Don’t lose your nerve,” he said, in that low steady tone Dimitri knew so well. Gilbert had been with him since Lambert died. At this point, that was longer than Dimitri had known his father.

“Not my nerve,” Dimitri managed. No, not that: his nerves were on fire.

How many hours of practice had brought him here? How much pain, cold biting into his toes, the ache that burrowed deep, the burn no healers could soothe from his knee? The ice took and took and swallowed it all, and all it gave back was this: a clouded reflection, and the music wavering overhead.

A fall during a routine was a clean death: immediate, obvious. What happened to Dimitri was slower. The landing on his quad loop; the ungraceful tangle of his footwork. The routine fraying more with every element, failing as surely as he had when his ACL snapped in two. Skating was nothing but the ability to move his body precisely, according to his will, and it had gone. If he were being honest, he’d known it was lost the moment he stepped onto the ice.

He didn’t need to look at the score when he’d finished. He would have preferred the fall.

The athletes complex at Gronder Field was huge and sprawling, blocky after the latest round of renovations. A city with its own lore, its own history. The committee could argue over the colors of the flag all they wanted; at its heart, Gronder was still a battlefield. You could get lost in it. 

Felix was in the lobby when Dimitri came downstairs, electric with intent. Shorts and a worn t-shirt, with his Team Faerghus jacket in concession to the weather. This far south, it wouldn’t snow, but Pegasus Moon still brought with it a chill. Dimitri didn’t know what to say to him, so he didn’t. In passing he noted that Felix still favored the same brand of running shoes he did.

After the surgery, it was a long time before Dimitri could run. He gritted his teeth through the limp for his exercises, paced until the tenderness in the joint turned sharp, but the _pop_ of the ligament tearing had remained vivid in memory. A second injury would ground him for good. He thought—fearfully, shamefully—of Glenn, the stark lines of his face when he slammed into the ice and didn’t get back up. The idea that that might be Dimitri was intolerable.

He ran now, though, deep strides that made the night blur around him. He didn’t have anywhere to be, and nothing he wanted besides the stretch in his muscles, the slow-rising burn. It took time to come. He focused on breathing, the tight space inside his chest, and not on Felix matching his pace at his shoulder. The collar of his shirt slowly grew damp with sweat. The ground beneath him stayed solid, a hundred different paths that all led to the same place.

By the time he reached the fountain, he was panting badly, and Felix still beside him like a shadow.

In the water Dimitri could see himself, cracked and rippling like a ghost. “You always did run like you were trying to leave something behind,” Felix said, bracing his hand on the railing next to Dimitri’s. He was winded, too, color on his face, but on him it looked good. 

“What do you want.” Clipped, harsh, but Dimitri didn’t have anything else to give. “I didn’t ask you to come.”

Felix shrugged. “I didn’t say I wanted anything.”

Everyone wanted something from Dimitri. It wasn’t even personal. 

If Dimitri had been born in Leicester, or Adrestia; if the same illness that took Dimitri’s mother hadn’t swept through the ranks of Faerghus’s skaters. Twenty, thirty years ago, the medal Lambert never won would have been Faerghus’s to lose. The plague had stripped Faerghus of young lives, young _talent_ —no wonder that the nation watched Lambert with bated breath. Like his wins would be its redemption.

But Felix knew that. Before there was Dimitri, Faerghus had had Glenn.

“What were you thinking about,” he said, hating that he had to ask. Felix’s face turned puzzled, and that was worse. “When you were skating.”

“I don’t know,” Felix said, honest and perplexed. “Wasn’t, probably. You don’t, either.” Because thinking tangled your nerves and locked up the joints. Better to let the body do the work. 

“You.” Dimitri cleared his throat. “You’re different. You looked hungry out there.”

He couldn’t look at Felix, but in the fountain Felix tapped at one calf with his opposite foot, went still again. Felix, who used to be all motion. “Yeah,” he finally said. “Well.” 

What else was there to say? Dimitri remembered that look on Glenn’s face. It was there on Lambert’s face in all his recorded competitions, on Rodrigue’s if you turned back far enough. Not the desire to win—though they did that often enough—but the desire to be better, to be _great_. That was what kept you whole, as the ice threatened to shatter you from the inside out. It kept you alive.

“You used to look like that,” Felix said. 

“Yes.” 

“I wanted to beat you.”

Dimitri breathed. “I know.” He’d been worth that, once upon a time. 

Felix made a sound. His elbow was closer to Dimitri’s on the railing now, nearly touching. “You don’t have to do this.”

Dimitri laughed. It came out sharp and ugly. “Of course I do.”

“No, I mean—” Felix dragged his hand through his hair, agitated, threw it back down like a gauntlet. “You don’t have to do it _like this_ , Dimitri, _saints_. If you’re going to kill yourself, it should be for more than a fucking medal.”

“It’s not the _medal_ ,” Dimitri bit out, chest too full and tight to say more. Felix knew that. Felix knew everything about Dimitri, had been with him when Dimitri got the news about Lambert, and—

“It’s not better, you know,” Felix said, voice like a whip. “Killing yourself for your father.”

It was as if Dimitri had been suddenly thrust into a block of ice. “Shut up,” he said, surprised at how steady it came out.

Felix didn’t. “You were better than this,” he said. “You _are_ better than this. But there’s no point in competing against ghosts. I’ve done enough of it to know.”

Dimitri pulled himself up, slow and painful. Felix stared at him, unflinching. He remembered Felix walking away from him once, young and scared and angry over something they were only beginning to comprehend. They’d both paid their dues in the years since. It would be easier for Felix this time.

So Dimitri did it first. He turned and left and let the roar in his ears drown out everything else.

Felix wasn’t wrong. That was the thing. Some days Dimitri thought about stopping. Not this monotony, the pain dulled to numbness and a routine broken down to pieces, rotations and angles and timing. Not waking at dawn, the heels of his feet cracked and bleeding, stepping onto the ice for the endless, inescapable fall. Not—and he thought this rarely, glancingly, wistfully—waking at all. 

If Dimitri stopped—

His thoughts wrenched away from the idea. He forced them back. He would stop one way or the other. How many years until his body gave out, the same as Glenn’s? The generations of ill-fated Galatea skaters, or the Uberts, a blade across the face. You were lucky to retire with grace. If the ice didn’t make the choice for you.

If he stopped, Faerghus would find someone else for its dreams. Dimitri harbored no illusions about that. Felix, perhaps, if he’d let it happen, or Ashe, who was climbing fast in the ranks. Or lower still, the children graduating into the juniors, still young enough to dream. Dimitri thought of the kids he coached occasionally, when he clawed out the time. There was hunger in them. There would always be someone.

“Dimitri?” someone said. He’d made it back to the complex. Faerghus jacket, he noted before the face; and then he stopped walking.

“Rodrigue,” he said dumbly. “I didn’t know you were here.” Some of Rodrigue’s skaters were beginning to show promise in pairs—the best among them Ingrid’s brother and a transplant from Daphnel—but they were too young to be here. But that was a foolish thought. His son was competing; of course Rodrigue would be here. 

Rodrigue was kind enough to ignore Dimitri’s fumbling. “Caught the short programs this morning,” he said, smiling. “I didn’t get the chance to congratulate you.”

Dimitri winced. “Felix did well,” he said, though that was scarcely better. “You must be proud.”

“I am,” said Rodrigue. His expression was complicated, but that, at least, came easily. “Felix is… he’s chosen to carve out his own path.” A laughable understatement, and from the rueful twist of his mouth Rodrigue was well aware. “I’m glad he’s found one that makes him happy.” Then his gaze sharpened. Dimitri could do nothing to stop what came next. “I’m proud of you, too.”

“Don’t,” Dimitri said, harsh and jagged, “you shouldn’t be,” a hot prickle in his throat. “I’m not doing well.” 

“Dimitri.”

“I’m not,” he said again, louder, and he didn’t just mean the Games. “I could have retired.” A secret, but one that Rodrigue surely knew. “After the knee. I wanted to. I wanted to stop.”

During his recovery, when Dimitri had nothing to do but strengthening exercises, there was an article he returned to often: _Is the Blaiddyd Legacy Over?_ He scanned through the litany of Lambert’s successes, read about the grandfather he did not remember, the string of men who had led Faerghus to dominance on the ice. A Blaiddyd had landed the first quad in competition. The first triple-triple combination. The original Blaiddyd had been a warrior, and as Fódlan became civilized, they’d merely exchanged one blade for another. 

Dimitri, it turned out, had not had the strength to end the habit. The Gronder Games were achievable still. It was, as always, a matter of timing.

“We never get this right, do we?” said Rodrigue, half under his breath, but he was looking right at Dimitri as he said his next words. “Never tell you that you’re allowed to stop until it’s too late.”

In his own way, Rodrigue wielded words as dangerously as Felix did. Dimitri tried to respond, but his throat was closing up. In another moment Rodrigue had him, staggering slightly at the motion; Dimitri was taller than Rodrigue. “Sorry,” he said, before an ugly sob tore out of him, smearing wetness against Rodrigue’s shoulder, and Rodrigue only stroked a warm hand down Dimitri’s back and let him.

It took some time before Dimitri could see clearly. The damp fleece under his face wasn’t the crisp blue that Felix had worn, nor the federation jacket they’d redesigned a few years back. It was achingly familiar all the same. He’d clambered all over one just like it, left sticky fingerprints at the collar, run his fingers over the letters stitched in gold. Lambert wore it in Dimitri’s earliest memories of him; he’d been wearing it when his car spun off the road on the way to Kleiman.

“He never made it here,” Dimitri said, wiping his mouth, voice wobbling all the same. Rodrigue would know what he meant. “I don’t want to be— ungrateful.”

“Lambert was so proud of you,” said Rodrigue, a little unsteady himself. “He loved you. Don’t be unhappy for his sake. For anyone’s.”

Dimitri drew a long, shuddering breath. Thought about stopping. He felt drained, exhausted, but the world went on, solid beneath his feet. It wasn’t pity that softened Rodrigue’s expression, he thought suddenly. Rodrigue knew.

How many of them carried this in their hearts? How could they not, when each of their bodies came with a deadline?

“I think,” Dimitri said, “I should talk to Gilbert.” 

Dimitri took no questions at the press conference. He said only the facts. He was retiring after the Games. He did not yet know what he would do next. Gilbert—who had trained his father, who had skated with his grandfather—had no objections. He was not withdrawing from the free program.

The news hit the skating blogs quickly. Dimitri’s phone buzzed with notifications. Sylvain. Ingrid. Dedue. A text from Edelgard, which only read, _Cut through_. He hadn’t realized she kept his number. He used to say that to her when she underrotated her doubles.

Felix, when he came, slammed his fist on Dimitri’s door until Dimitri opened it. “You _quit_?” he demanded, muscling his way in. “What are you doing?”

Since the announcement, a glassy sort of calm had settled over Dimitri. It was done. There was no way to go back, and that granted him a peculiar kind of freedom. “Good to see you, too.”

“I thought you were being stupid.” Felix swept a glance around the room, like something in their surroundings might provide an explanation for Dimitri. “I didn’t think you’d _give up_.”

“I didn’t.” Surely Felix of all people could understand. “Why did you come back?” 

“That’s not—” Felix blinked. “What?”

Always less graceful off-ice than when he was on it. There was a foreign feeling tugging at Dimitri’s mouth. Fondness. 

“You didn’t have to.” He remembered the way Felix had walked off the ice, stiff with determination. He had left his coach, his _father_ —an unimaginable act. “I thought you meant to leave for good.”

Dimitri didn’t know what Felix had done in the year he stopped skating. There were only vague hints in his movements now, stillness gathered into his body; the spiraling embroidery of his costume, so unlike Faerghus. Back when they were children, they’d spoken of the Gronder Games as an inevitability. Now Dimitri knew better. Felix had chosen this. 

Felix swallowed. Bit his lip, then pressed the tip of his tongue to the divot left by his teeth. It was a tell. Maybe no one had ever told him that. Maybe no one else knew.

“I told you,” Felix said. “I wanted to beat you.”

“You already did.” Dimitri took a step toward Felix, and now Felix had to tilt his head up. His mouth was damp. Here was a truth Dimitri had forgotten: landing a perfect triple-triple and kissing Felix used to make his blood sing the same way.

“Nationals doesn’t count.” Dimitri nearly laughed at how Felix managed to sound dismissive, despite the darkening of his eyes. “You weren’t yourself.”

Felix demanded so much—but this, Dimitri could give. “Tomorrow, then,” he said. “Last chance.”

He had loved skating once. Felix was touching him—his mouth, his jaw—burning up what didn’t matter to ash, and it turned out that what was left of him loved it still.

Felix had to tug Dimitri’s head down to kiss him. Long, hot, wet, taking Dimitri’s breath from his lungs. There was a disgruntled sound against his mouth, Felix’s fingers digging into his shoulders. “Get _down_ ,” he said. “You were always so big.”

“It doesn’t help,” Dimitri said, half-laughing, letting himself be pressed backwards. The back of his knees hit the bed, so he sat. Felix clambered on top of him, knees digging into the muscle of Dimitri’s thighs, and it was like they were teenagers again. Goddess, it had been a long time. His dick was stirring against Felix’s weight.

Felix bit at the juncture of Dimitri’s neck and shoulder: brief, but hard enough to hurt. “You know the judges go wild about the height on your jumps.” His mouth stayed there, wet and bruising, breaths hot against the skin. Felix was lucky Dimitri’s costume covered his throat. If people saw—

After tomorrow, it wouldn’t matter if people saw. The thought made Dimitri flush. Reflexively he brought a hand down to Felix’s ass—tight with muscle, and strong. Squeezed, until Felix let out a breathy sound, grinding down against Dimitri’s thigh. He did it again for that sound, for the heat rising in Felix’s face.

Felix’s thighs tightened around Dimitri’s hips, and then he was rolling over, panting on the bed. Dimitri’s bed. “Next time, you beast,” he said, teeth flashing in a grin. “I have a competition to win.” 

“Next time,” Dimitri said, turning toward him. Two words, but from them unfurled a future. Dimitri was momentarily staggered by the enormity of it. He didn’t know what lay in that distant place, unformed and unseen—but Felix would be there. “You seem awfully sure there will be one.”

“Of course there will,” said Felix, hooking one foot around Dimitri’s waist, heel digging into the small of Dimitri’s back. “I don’t start what I don’t intend to finish.” His hands paused sliding under Dimitri’s shirt. “If you want to,” he said. “Try, I mean.” 

“With you?” Dimitri said. Felix was tugging him down, his dick a hot line pressed against Dimitri’s own, and his hair was coming loose. A lock of it fell across the bridge of Felix’s nose, and Dimitri pushed it out of the way, smiled at the way Felix wrinkled his forehead. He could try to have this. In time he might even be good at it. “Always.”

Dimitri did not remember much of the free skate itself, but the moments surrounding it were fragments of perfect clarity. The rolling masses of blue in the stands; the chill seeping through his gauzy sleeves. He was early in the lineup, a disadvantage, but that was all right. He didn’t look for Felix as he made his way to the center of the ice, felt his gaze just the same. _You’re competition_ , Felix had said. Like that was the only thing that mattered.

With Lambert, Dimitri had first discovered the joy in skating: beauty at the knife’s edge. That was how he deserved to be remembered, here at the heart of Gronder. Dimitri let the rest slide off him like water, his doubts and his ghosts. Felix wanted to win—but he wanted to _skate_.

The music trembled to life over the speakers. He let it slip into his bones and carry him, the way he hadn’t all season. His body knew the sound, the turns, the choreography carved into him bloody. The grand bargain: everything he had, for one perfect moment. That was what Dimitri hungered for, rising up like a tide, and nothing could’ve stopped him, not his past, not his future. Nothing at all but the bright, inevitable present.

He ended on his knee, face turned up to the lights. Sensation came back to him in stages. The sweat beginning to cool on his face, and all the stadium in a roar. The world was waiting for him, and Felix, with a fierce, blazing smile. This was worth keeping. Dimitri didn’t need the score.

###### iii. future

“Ready?” said Felix, poking his head into the dressing room. “What’s taking you so long?”

As if he didn’t know. Dimitri held up the brush, hid his smile when Felix rolled his eyes and came to take it from him. 

“You did your makeup for years without me,” Felix said, even as he took Dimitri’s jaw in his hand. “This is just indulgence.”

“It’s better when you do it,” said Dimitri. The brush swept over his closed eyelids, light in Felix’s practiced hand. 

“Hmm.” Felix sounded unconvinced. A click on the countertop. Dimitri knew what came next. “Don’t talk.” 

He was familiar enough not to tense at the touch of the lipstick to his mouth. Then the tissue, delicate on his lips. “Okay,” Felix declared, fingers still holding Dimitri’s face, and hastily frowned when Dimitri opened his eyes. “Now come on, Annette’s about to have a breakdown.”

“We are rather a handful.” The show was set to open tomorrow. It was anyone’s guess whether they’d manage it before Annette gave herself a concussion dashing around the rink. “Is it still Lorenz?”

“Yeah, he wants to change the color of the rose petals for his solo.”

“Now? But they’ve already been ordered.”

“Exactly.”

The rink was a riot of sound. Lysithea, so precise on the ice, had tapioca tea in hand, was gulping down great mouthfuls of chewy bubbles, while Petra displayed the cutouts framing her tattoos to an admiring crowd. “Hey, Dimitri!” Sylvain called, clear across the space. “You sure you don’t need more pointers on that lift?”

“No, don’t you dare—”

Dimitri already had his hands at Felix’s waist. It was a practiced motion to lift, turn, set back onto the mat. Sylvain’s whistle rose up above a storm of clapping. 

“Crests aren’t banned in ice shows,” Felix grumbled for about the thousandth time. The bridge of his nose was pink. “I could lift you just as well.”

“We agreed,” Dimitri reminded him. “You’ve never done pairs with anyone—”

“—whereas you’ve so much experience from doing it ten years ago—” 

“—and then _you_ said, whoever’s better at skating can do the lift—” 

“I have more medals than you,” Felix said. He was sulking. “Nobody’s broken my SP record yet. Just because you won the once.”

“Well,” Dimitri said, tangling their hands together. The rehearsal; the show. They were going to skate, and Dimitri’s heart was soaring. “That was the once that counted.” 

**Author's Note:**

> it takes a village to write a big bang, even a pinch hit! thank you to tam for the unfailing encouragement, lin and lydia for the handholding and patience, and lucy and idril for stellar beta work. all remaining errors are mine.
> 
> the wonderful art embedded here is due to the lovely momo and can be retweeted [here](https://twitter.com/aSeaQuinn/status/1314371175540158466)!


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